The Indus Valley Civilisation urban centre of Mohenjo-daro, today in Pakistan’s Sindh province, had democracy that was on par with ancient Greece and Rome, a new study has found.
A team of researchers analysed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and found that shared, inclusive governance was far more common than was once believed, according to a statement by the Field Museum in Chicago, United States.
“By widening the analytical vantage, we see that the key attributes of democratic/collective governance are neither unique nor limited to a single continent or specific historical moment. In the results of our analyses, it is not particularly unusual that Athens and Republican Rome scale as relatively democratic, but parallels are found for the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and the Protohistoric Zuni in North America, the early highland Mesoamerican cities of Teotihuacan and Monte Albán, Tlaxcallan (the Aztec foe), and the early urban center of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley. Several of these centers, including Teotihuacan and Monte Albán, endured as relatively collectively governed polities for centuries, even more than a millennium in the latter case. Even in certain urban contexts, collective governance was neither fleeting nor unstable,” the research paper, published in the journal Science Advances, noted.
The 31 ancient societies included:
In Europe:
1. Anglo-Saxon England.
2. Capetian France.
3. Siena.
4. Rome.
5. Athens.
In Asia:
6. Ebla.
7. Uruk.
8. Ur.
9. Mohenjo-daro.
10. Dholavira.
11. Panchala.
12. Vatsa.
13. Anyang.
14. Angkor.
In the Americas:
15. Iroquoia.
16. Cahokia.
17. Etowah.
18. Chaco.
19. Zuni.
20. Calusa.
21. Teotihuacan.
22. Tenochtitlan.
23. Tlaxcallan.
24. Monte Alban.
25. San Lorenzo.
26. Tikal.
27. Chiapa de Corzo.
28. Naco.
29. Altar de Sacrificios.
30. Copan.
31. Alto Magdalena.
“People often assume that democratic practices started in Greece and Rome,” said Gary Feinman, the study’s lead author and the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican and Central American Anthropology at the Field Museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center. “But our research shows that many societies around the world developed ways to limit the power of rulers and give ordinary people a voice.”
In an autocracy, just one person or a small group holds all the power; examples of autocracy can include absolute monarchies and dictatorships. In a democracy, decision-making power is shared among the people. Elections often go hand-in-hand with democracy, but not always—many autocrats have been freely elected.
“Elections aren’t exactly the greatest metric for what counts as a democracy, so with this study, we tried to draw on historical examples of human political organization,” said Feinman. “We defined two key dimensions of governance. One of them is the degree to which power is concentrated in just one individual or just one institution. The other is the degree of inclusiveness—how much the bulk of the citizens have access to power and can participate in some aspects of governance.”
Feinman and his colleagues examined 40 cases from 31 polities on three continents spanning thousands of years. The polities all had different methods of record-keeping, and not all of them left behind written records. So, the team had to find different ways to infer what the governments in these historical contexts were like.
“I think the use of space is very telling,” said Feinman. “When you find urban areas with broad, open spaces, or when you see public buildings that have wide spaces where people can get together and exchange information, those societies tend to be more democratic.”
On the other hand, some architectural and city-planning remnants indicate a society where fewer people concentrated power. “If you see pyramids with a tiny space at the top, or urban plans where all the roads run toward the ruler’s residence, or societies where there’s very little space where people could get together for exchanging information, those are all proxies for more autocratic cases,” said Feinman.
The team examined the 40 cases that had been documented by generations of archaeologists and historians, and systematically analysed different aspects of the places’ architecture, art, and urban planning. For instance, artwork depicting rulers as larger than life and monumental gravesites associated with rulers both point towards greater autocracy, whereas open plazas and rare portrayals of rulers are indicators of less concentrated power.
The researchers also found a “strong correlation between spectacular ritual and autocratic governance”, indicating the important means by which principals accrue or reinforce their personal power and authority through shock and awe.
“For example, at Anyang, rulers and other principals were interred at death during spectacular ritual events that were often accompanied by human sacrifices and the inclusion of horses, chariots, and large quantities of elaborate goods in a deep subsurface tomb. Alternatively, processions, dances, and participatory events in large open spaces and dedicated more to promoting fertility, cohesion, and the maintenance of cosmic order (rather than glorifying individual rulers) are identified for more collectively governed polities, including Teotihuacan and Mohenjo-daro,” the paper noted.
The study used buildings, inscriptions, city layouts, administrative systems, and signs of wealth inequality to measure how societies balanced political power and what factors contributed to the axes of variation in governance that they recorded. The team created an “autocracy index” to place each society along a spectrum—from highly autocratic to strongly collective.
“Among archaeologists, there’s entrenched thought that Athens and Republican Rome were the only two democracies in the ancient world, and that in Asia and the Americas, governance was tyrannical or autocratic,” Feinman said. “In our analysis, we saw societies in other parts of the world that were equally democratic to Athens and Rome.”
“These findings show that both democracy and autocracy were widespread in the ancient world,” observed New York University Professor David Stasavage.
Coauthor Linda Nicholas, Adjunct Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum, noted that “societies also developed ways for people to share power and facilitate inclusiveness, revealing that democracy has deep and widespread historical roots. I think a lot of people would find that surprising.”
The researchers found that population size and the number of political levels did not account for whether a society would be autocratic, which challenges the established idea that demographic and political scale naturally leads to strong rulers. Instead, noted Feinman, “the strongest factor shaping how much power rulers held was how they financed their authority.” Societies that depended heavily on revenue that was controlled or monopolised by leaders—such as mines, long-distance trade routes, slave labour, or war plunder—tended to become more autocratic. In contrast, societies funded mainly through broad internal taxes or community labour were more likely to distribute power and maintain systems of shared governance.
The study also shows that societies with more inclusive political systems generally had lower levels of economic inequality. “These findings challenge the idea that autocracy and great inequality are natural or inevitable outcomes of complexity or growth,” said Feinman. “History shows that people across the world have created inclusive political systems—even under difficult conditions.”
That bigger picture is especially relevant because today, there is a concentration of wealth and power among a very small number of individuals. A better understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.
The authors of the paper include Gary M Feinman, David Stasavage, David M Carballo, Sarah B Barber, Adam Green, Jacob Holland-Lulewicz, Dan Lawrence, Jessica Munson, Linda M Nicholas, Francesca Fulminante, Sarah Klassen, Keith W Kintigh, and John Douglass.